I was wondering if there are any writers here on such spiritual topics who have read the majority of the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran and the Hadiths and can comment on what they felt of the material in these books and how well they were written and what they felt about the content it contained? Even if it is just the Old and New Testament and the Quran I was wondering what you felt after reading these books and if each of these books has managed to fundamentally affect how you write about spirituality?
Are there writers here who've read much of the Old and New Testaments, the Hadiths and the Quran?
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I've read the whole Bible twice.
I personally hate reading spiritual stuff (other than the Bible). Too preachy. Unless it's like a biography or a self-help book (like The Purpose Driven Life). Don't like writing it either.
The Bible has it all. There's the excruciatingly boring parts (Numbers) and the romance (Ruth) and the exciting parts (David and Goliath -- although I liked the focus of David's relationship with his father-in-law Saul and the family more). It's got murder (David and Bathsheba), magic (Moses), horror (Revelations), conspiracy (Jesus), dystopia (Noah's ark), and whole family sagas (Abraham through Jesus). The New Testament focuses on spirituality. I'm not so much into metaphors and parables and hidden meanings, so I personally like the Old Testament more, although I'd say the New Testament felt like it had more action (yes, I know the Old Testament had plenty of action too, and it also had lots of hidden meanings too).
I personally hate reading spiritual stuff (other than the Bible). Too preachy. Unless it's like a biography or a self-help book (like The Purpose Driven Life). Don't like writing it either.
The Bible has it all. There's the excruciatingly boring parts (Numbers) and the romance (Ruth) and the exciting parts (David and Goliath -- although I liked the focus of David's relationship with his father-in-law Saul and the family more). It's got murder (David and Bathsheba), magic (Moses), horror (Revelations), conspiracy (Jesus), dystopia (Noah's ark), and whole family sagas (Abraham through Jesus). The New Testament focuses on spirituality. I'm not so much into metaphors and parables and hidden meanings, so I personally like the Old Testament more, although I'd say the New Testament felt like it had more action (yes, I know the Old Testament had plenty of action too, and it also had lots of hidden meanings too).
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Thank you for answering. And the Quran and Hadiths? I would love to know since I sometimes think I am the only AWer who has ever read significant parts of both the Bible and the Quran and Hadiths. I mean it seems like that is true for literally no other writer who posts here.
Nope, never read them. Never even seen them. I've read the Bible because it's in my religion. I'm not very interested in reading books from other religions, even for educational purposes.
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If I may be so blunt without offending, why on earth would you think that. I'm pretty sure we have muslim members, and even though I myself am not muslim I have read the entire Bible and Qur'ran multiple times.
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We have muslim members as well as Christian and Jewish. I've read the Hebrew and Christian Bibles (including the Apocrypha) and the Quran, but not the Hadiths. The also read the Vedas, the Avestas and a number of other sacred texts.
But the OP question is not a simple one of different texts being read. Different cultures have different relations to the various texts. Western cultures are sufficiently replete with Christian biblical elements and story references that people who have never read any version of the text in any language will still think they know and understand it. The same would be true for the Quran in most majority Muslim cultures.
In short, text depends on context.
So, can we get a bit of clarification on the OP.
But the OP question is not a simple one of different texts being read. Different cultures have different relations to the various texts. Western cultures are sufficiently replete with Christian biblical elements and story references that people who have never read any version of the text in any language will still think they know and understand it. The same would be true for the Quran in most majority Muslim cultures.
In short, text depends on context.
So, can we get a bit of clarification on the OP.
Well I don't know. When discussions of Islam are brought up I get the impression that there are not other AWers who have read thought he whole Quran and understand that in Islam the Quran is the literal word of God, the equivalent of the 10 Commandments and the verses in the Quran cannot be interpreted as relevant for a specific time period like Old Testament verses have. I have seen threads such as the one about the debates with Sam Harris/Bill Maher and Ben Affleck and anyone who has read the Quran and understood that in Islam it is the world of God would see that Sam Harris is right in every way. If someone objects to what speakers like Sam Harris have to say, that is a telltale sign to me that they have not read the Quran with an understanding that it was meant to be the literal, not figurative, word of God.
The original intent was to gain an idea of what writers think about these three books in terms of the appeal they have on a philosophical level and as a tool of moral guidance and to get views from a writer's perspective on how well crafted these books are. And since the Old and New Testament and the Quran are listed, it would also serve as a comparative analysis of the two largest Western Religions and the largest Eastern religion.
Another point to note is that how "well written" a spiritual text is cannot be judged with the same measures we use for other writing. I was almost going to say "for more ephemeral writing."
Aside from the matter of translation, which is a huge factor, there is also the question of transmission, that is, how the text was originated initially and how it was handled initially. The original material from which translations were taken is another huge factor to take into account.
I myself have read the Christian bible numerous times in my youth, and have read Vedic texts and some of the Quran also in those years, but none of this recently enough to comment on texts. I was raised Christian and became what I might call an agnostic mystic in my childhood, and have explored quite widely.
I have known a few Muslims personally who have informed my spirituality with what they have shared of their religion, in particular the care for children, and some of the homelier rituals of hospitality. Some of this has been very moving to me and given me a deep respect for Islam. The fundamentalism we now see in many organized religions is not something I associate with wholeseome spirituality at all, but consider to be a spiritual disease that humanity is suffering from at this time.
Aside from the matter of translation, which is a huge factor, there is also the question of transmission, that is, how the text was originated initially and how it was handled initially. The original material from which translations were taken is another huge factor to take into account.
I myself have read the Christian bible numerous times in my youth, and have read Vedic texts and some of the Quran also in those years, but none of this recently enough to comment on texts. I was raised Christian and became what I might call an agnostic mystic in my childhood, and have explored quite widely.
I have known a few Muslims personally who have informed my spirituality with what they have shared of their religion, in particular the care for children, and some of the homelier rituals of hospitality. Some of this has been very moving to me and given me a deep respect for Islam. The fundamentalism we now see in many organized religions is not something I associate with wholeseome spirituality at all, but consider to be a spiritual disease that humanity is suffering from at this time.
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Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Here's a life hint, seriously: Not agreeing with you is NOT the same as not understanding you.
People can understand you just fine, and yet miraculously still not agree with you.
Thirty percent of Americans believe the Bible to be the literal, not figurative, word of god.
Fifty percent of American Muslims believe the Quran should be read literally (and 57% believe in more than one interpretation of Islam).
Globally, the figures are smaller, but it depends where you look. In some heavily-Muslim African nations, the percentage of Muslims who believe there's more than one interpretation of Islam is also the majority.
Anyone walking around Earth will notice how many people, however much they claim to believe however literally, actually follow any holy book to the letter.
Facts, not fear and propaganda, are kind of your best bet,.
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I would think that you can at least analyze how much they make sense logically and to what extent can you follow these books and be a good scientific philosopher. And analyze if these books contradict themselves too much or are easier to follow. I mean, the Old Testament is known for being very hard to follow and the Quran has been considered by western intellectuals like Mark Twain, Voltaire, Arthur Schopenhaver, John Wesley and Anthony Flew, among others, to be one of the worst and most useless books ever written in human history and I get the impression many non Muslim Americans who read the Quran feel the same way. So there are absolutes that can be used to judge religious writing just like you can non religious writing. Although I do wonder if maybe our biases towards Eastern religions may be part of why these early Western literary scholars felt this way on the Quran.
It may help if you went back into the Quran and see if these ideas are really there like they say it is.
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The Bible is supposed to be the literal word of God as well, do you hold that against Christians? Just like in Christianity there are muslims, some of whom I've met, that do not consider the Qur'ran the literal word of the creator. I've known one or two quite devout people who think that, which I'm sure comes as a surprise to you. I find your proccupation with holding Muslims to a standard you don't hold Christians or Jews to disturbing.
Well I suppose we can leave that aside for now. For another topic, what comments do you have exactly on the poetic verses in the Old and New Testament and how well they flow and how well you think the stories in these books flow from one to another?
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To whom?
Have you met any orthodox Jews?
Have you met the Duggars?
You keep making these blanket statements that are not only flatly incorrect, they're kind of, frankly, bizarre.
When I hit quote, your post was asserting that the Bible itself wasn't taken literally as commandments like the Ten Commandments are.
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Well I didn't say none of the Jews try to follow the Old Testament literally. But Orthodox Jews are hardly mainstream. In any event, I was genuinely curious what you feel about these three books when it comes to how many good values that these books with were written for religious reasons can offer and what you think about how well the poetic structures of these 3 books are crafted. And what comments you have about how well the stories flow in all of them.
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Okay stop. There are four tons of things being thrown around here that need to be separated if this thread is to continue.
The questions being asked cannot be answered on the face of them because they do not make sense if taken as stated.
Let's start with the fact that the questions themselves demonstrated exactly the kind of cultural context that show the impossibility of answering those questions.
The Old Testament is a Christian term for the Hebrew Bible as a Christian text, that is as a precursor to the New Testament. The understanding and interpretation of it in Christian terms is always done relative to that conception.
That book is not the same as the Hebrew Bible which is understood and interpreted on its own relative to the lives and history of the Jewish people.
Thus despite using the same text there is little overlap between the interpretations created by the Doctors of the Church and by the Talmudic rabbis. There is some, but still not a lot of overlap between Christian mystics and Jewish Kabbalists.
Even the phrase Word of God, which sounds like it would be a sharable concept between peoples of the book, does not mean the same thing. Saying that the Christian Bible is the Word of God is an attempt to draw upon and interpret the opening lines of the Gospel of John (In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God).
In most branches of Judaism the Torah (what Christians call the five books of Moses) is deemed to have a sacred character which separates it from the rest of the Bible, and it is often said to preexist the world.
The Quran is not seen the same by different branches of Islam. The Sufi view of it is quite different from most, for example.
So, if this thread is to continue, people need to unpack their preconceptions and understand that these sacred texts do not exist in isolation and cannot be treated as if they do. They have the weight of multiple histories and interpretations as well as applications behind them, and even the ways of talking about them carry some of that weight.
If people wish to have a discussion of sacred texts it needs to be in proper context, otherwise this could devolve into a flame war, which I'm not having on this board.
This is totally fair for this thread. Can it work if the discussion for now continues with how well these books are written in terms of how well the stories flow from one to another and how well organized the verses in each of the three books are? Can that be a valid continuing point?
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If you can't read Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Arabic, how can you discuss how well they were written? You can talk about the quality of the translations, but that's a different matter.
Also, even taking them apart into verses doesn't work, because treating the sacred texts as made out of pieces that can be taken apart is a school of interpretation.
And what schools of writerly interpretation do you think are relevant? Bear in mind these are basic texts for the cultures from which modern writing evolved. Are you going to judge them as if they were written and published yesterday according to the fashions of writing that we adhere to these days? That's a seriously ahistorical perspective.
Furthermore, the matter of organization of texts is culturally relative. The Quran was organized as it was written, but the Hebrew and Christian Bibles were assembled by committees long after they were written, so how do you have a valid basis for comparison?
I guess there are more complexities but I would think it would be possible to comment on them from a purely aesthetic value and analyzing the extent to which these books contradict themselves. I mean, we have had philosophers like Plato's The Republic which was written in 380 BC, did not have English as its original language and is often considered today to be a truly beautiful book from a philisophical level and an aesthetic level. I am still interested in knowing why the 3 holy books I mentioned cannot be evaluated the same way. I know that one factor is that the Bible was organized by committees and not one person but is that the only reason here?
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Plato's writing is the work of one person in one place, in a context that is understandable. The Republic isn't a book read in isolation either. It is read and analyzed in relation to Hellenic culture, the circumstances of Athens at the time, as well as the history of philosophy. Sensible philosophers (don't laugh there are some) don't read it as an isolated text.
Again, the things you are calling three books aren't that. Each is multiple books with multiple authors. The New Testament even has names attached to the different writers: Each gospel has a person it is ascribed to, as do the Epistles.
If you wanted to examine the Epistles of Paul for example in the context of what we understand of Paul's life and times and the circumstances of the early church, that would be a viable discussion. If you wish to look at the different gospels and see how the various tellings of Jesus' life compare, again that's a viable discussion.
If you wish to discuss the Old Testament, then you are looking at a text placed into a relationship to the New Testament with interpretations taken to fit Christian world view. That can be done.
If you wish to discuss the Hebrew Bible, then you're looking at a text assembled out of a number of sacred writings at a time and place when a people were deciding who they were and what they were doing. If you wish to discuss individual books of it that were explicitly written at different times and places that's also fine (for example, each prophet exists in his own time and place), those can also be discussed.
But treating them as whole texts as if with a single contextless modern author is not a fruitful method of interpretation.
When you look at Western intellectuals like Anthony Flew, Mark Twain, Voltaire and others who said they hated the Quran, do you think there is a very good chance they missed these points conceptually? Do you think many secularist critics who rip apart the Old Testament and call it disorganized nonsense are missing this conceptually as well?
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I think that discussions on this board are to be had according to RYFW. In order to have a respectful discussion of religion and religious texts we keep things in context. That other discussions elsewhere are not respectful is not relevant to how we carry on here.
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To piggy back off of what Richard has stated here, it is also intelectually dishonest to treat such texts as having single authors or being singular works. It also tends to make the discussion more complicated than need be in a way that makes people getting their points across difficult.
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Add to that the changes in meaning that comes from the texts being subjected to various edits down through the years, the various translations and translations of translations and the interpretations that get made of all of those different versions of the texts.
And that is regardless of the religion in question. Pick the most recent religion that is believed by more than, say, 300 people in more than 3 geographic locations. My bet is you can find versions of passages of text, and varying interpretations of the text.
Now compound that with centuries of social, geographic, economic, educational and cultural change.
And that is regardless of the religion in question. Pick the most recent religion that is believed by more than, say, 300 people in more than 3 geographic locations. My bet is you can find versions of passages of text, and varying interpretations of the text.
Now compound that with centuries of social, geographic, economic, educational and cultural change.
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